Homer project and APPS4EUROPE organized Business Lounge in Turin on 9th July, where the 6 winning projects developed during the Hack4Med organized in Andalusia, Piemonte, Veneto, Crete, Montenegro and Corse were presented to the audience.

The HOMER project transnational winner was application Geostep, from Montenegro, and they were awarded with the possibility to access to the 2015 Future Everything Festival (http://futureeverything.org/) in Manchester. On that event, selected projects from the different business lounge organized in all Europe pitched their ideas to a panel of startup funding specialists.

Montenegro partner makes an interview with representative of Geostep team, in order to hear its impressions about this international event:

Q: Can you explain concept of competition that was held in Manchester?

A: Actually, it was APPS4EUROPE Business Lounge, which was part of Future Everything Festival. There were 13 different apps from all Europe, and we all had 3 minutes to present our idea. After pitching session we had 20 minutes session alone with judges, to answer their questions and introduce them with implementation details. At final ceremony judges announced overall winner.

Q: Was there specific competition theme?

A: The main event theme was to increase awareness of the importance of open data. There was wide range of applications and ideas that are using open data sets to resolve problems in different areas like tourism, ecology, traffic, education etc.

Q: How they liked your idea?

A: We got very positive reaction from the audience and judges for the pitch. They really liked our design, idea and enthusiasm to create open data sets, instead of just using them.

Q: Who was the winner?

A: Winner was app GoOV, from Netherlands, which enables people with mental disabilities or dementia to travel safely by public transport.

Q: What are your overall impressions?

A: We had opportunity to talk with lot of people and listen interesting presentations, so it raised ours awareness about importance of open data. This experiences gave us a chance to present our idea, one more time, on an international level and motivated us to continue app development and popularization.